In short a content house is usually a large house or mansion that is used by content creators to give the appearance that they ooze money out the wahoo.

I was wondering why a lot of houses that show up in the godawful content my niece is allowed to watch that involve parents shoving cameras in their kids' lives are almost always large, yet empty aside from a few pieces of furniture.

They don't live there, but are seemingly rented out by whoever produces the videos to give off the appearance that 'this is what content creation can give you'

Is it to ensnare people into attempting to make their own? To feign success? I don't know, but it's incredibly odd to see.

I am done with this addiction once and for all. I have struggled with social media, YouTube, binge watching streaming, gaming, scrolling, etc. in some form or another off and on ever since we got the Internet in our home in 1995. I could write an entire book and how so much of my life has been shaped by my relationship with technology and the inner complexities of grappling with it.

I've gone off and on with a dumb phone vs. smart phone...even spent a lot of time in ITAA and quit all of my worst behaviors but never really got underneath the addiction

I have deleted and re-started social media accounts...I have done detoxes that lasted a month at a time. I have done every type of therapy imaginable. (CBT, DBT, EMDR....lots of acronyms)

I work part-time at a school and need very little technology for work. My husband works from home and can take care of a lot of our family's digital "errands" if you will. My child has also showed signs of extreme dysregulation with screen time which is a whole different story.

For 2025 this is how I will use technology:

*Light phone as my primary phone

*E-mail for work

*Texting

*GPS

*A few movies with the family (very rarely like watching Prisoner of Azkaban with my family when my child finishes the book)

*Sit down once a week with the husband on the computer to go over budgeting, personal e-mail, registering for community events, etc.

*Only use smart phone for payment app and booking exercise classes

Here is what I will not do:

*Social media (Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, etc.)

*Television

*Digital music

*Going online without a clear purpose

*YouTube

*Mindless scrolling through articles and news

Here is what I WILL do instead:

*Cook, exercise, board games, jigsaw puzzles, drink water, hang out with my family, work, clean, dance to music on CD's or our Alexa Echo dot, yoga classes, play the piano, go on walks outside, READ PAPER BOOKS, paint, organize my home, puzzle books, nap, take pictures with a real camera, draw, stare at the wall and do nothing, tarot & oracle card readings, feel my feelings, meditation, journaling, prayer, community events, comedy at a local open mic, and a billion other options

I am spending the next few days writing down the books I want to read, cleaning up my e-mail, making sure I can access voice mail on my Light Phone, etc. and then the nuclear option will be activated.

Over the past 2 years I keep blocking more and more aspects of my phone with various apps. I tell people my goal is to “make my phone useless” outside of what I actually want from it.

I don’t wanna do the dumb phone thing as phones are very useful such ass Calculators, Calendars, Maps, Communication (for work this is mandatory), Banking and payments, etc.

However there’s so much useless stuff like social media (I have none on my phone, nothing), YouTube scrolling, REDDIT scrolling! The worst!

Over the past 2 years I’ve installed a bunch of apps, some free some paid, to do some form of app/website blocking but I always was able to turn them off here or there.

Then something funny happened.

Youtube is blocked on my browser. I literally can’t turn it off. I’ve opened tons of apps, gone through setting, I have no idea where this “Youtube block” exists.

I THINK what happened was I had a paid app, blocked YouTube, didn’t pay to extend it, deleted it, and now it’s still just blocked somewhere on there.

So the past 2 months I just started doing more of that.

I use Blank Page, Screen Time, Down Time, Simple Phone, Blank Spaces, and more and set up schedule blocks, app blocks, total blocks, I use Blank Pages and blocked a gigantic list of websites and had my coworker I don’t know that well set a random PIN that he doesn’t remember the code to (every block list has a different PIN and I can’t keep track of them), and so on.

My MacBook is similar in that I use 1Focus and set up a bunch of unbreakable blocks with PINs I don’t even know.

Now my Reddit use is only open 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening so I just write down stuff I wanna do for when it opens up but I know from experience that in a week I’ll miss half these open blocks and break this habit.

Fun stuff.

Ads, reels, shorts, subscriptions, pay walls.

It ruins the Internet experience. Yet, people just accept this as normal.

Wanna play a game? Okay, enjoy endless ads and money grubbing opportunities unless you pay $6/month.

Wanna edit photos? Same thing.

Browsing the web: "We noticed you have an ad blocker, please disable it to continue." "Wanna read the rest of the article? Please pay us $5."

I don't know how anyone can find this experience fun, and entertaining. Especially when the entertainment just seems so similar, everywhere. Crappy short form content, top ten lists, people arguing about other online people.

Even wanting to watch actual shows and movies are under lock and key unless you have the physical copies, which depending on the material could be hard to find.

At least there's an app like Libby and libraries still exist. And personal creativity exists too.

Lately I haven't been able to fall asleep at the time I intend to do, because I keep wasting my time with YouTube shorts. Last night was the worse. I fell asleep at 4am after getting exhausted to the point of feeling it in my stomach. It's very hard to control myself before bed. My mind needs some stimulation, and I don't know how to fulfill that in a different way. What's worse is that during vacations and weekends I struggle to find ways to fill a whole day with meaningful activities, so I end up either playing video games, porn or YouTube. I feel my life is passing away. Anyone can relate? At least I managed to read some fiction more regularly. Hopefully I can start doing it every day and spend more time with it.

Just wondering if anyone knows of anyone focused on being off our devices as parents. I love Cal Newport but sometimes his experience as a professor (and dude into dude things) is hard to relate to. Any names of folks who speak out about being less plugged in from a parenting perspective?

I've given up various addictions throughout my life, and I always seemed to have pretty good control. It feels like giving up most anything for a month is trivial. Internet addiction is different though, giving up abusive usage for a day is painful, a week just about impossible. I've always known I'm an addict but it has only recently dawned on me how much it is to blame for so many problems I have.

I've realised that I'm in a position in life where I have a lot of ability to help others and live a fufilling life if I could just kick this overwhelming addiction, which steals more of my time than every other addiction has combined. So I dunno, I'm going to start, I'm listening to "Smart Phone, Dumb Phone" on a recommendation here as a first step.

I do not want to give up the internet completely, my ideal is to use the internet in a controlled and utilitarian way.

I have Snapchat but I use it for communication with people who, for some reason, refuse to use anything else.

Rarely do I venture onto stories, but I did today and I realized that a lot of people perceive themselves to have "haters" and constantly talk about sticking it to them.

This has been a thing since MySpace, if I recall correctly. People with about 50 friends or more always felt like those who wouldn't add them were hating on them, and I w always wondered why they felt so seemingly important to be ignored by everyone else.

Maybe its because I'm introverted, but I've never understood the point of inviting unnecessary drama onto oneself.

I'm cutting out TV and greatly reducing phone usage in January, at the same time I'm cutting sugar down. I'll be super pleasant for a couple weeks 😆. Question: Will my brain rebalanced or improve without the TV/phone addiction even if I'm listening to podcasts? I want my focus, motivation, and neurotransmitters to improve but am not sure if both visual AND audio need to be cut? Does that question make sense? Thanks! P.S. I don't usually do New Years resolutions, but this year I'll take ANY motivation I can get to even initiate this effort.

You might not think so right now but you are.

You're working your senses.

You are spending mental energy scrolling.

Looking for entertainment, an endless variety no less.

Your senses are constantly being worked, strained and engaged.

Although it might feel like you're being lazy and unproductive, from a sensory standpoint you are very much working and being active.

You're just doing the wrong kind of work.

Tofay I was on snapchat watching stories posted by my accquaintances, and then I got stumbled across by those portrait staged street vids, done by content creators who are not knowm by the general public, nor on other social medias. One particular is called Sam Jalal. His videos are literally so staged, but radical. He was literally harassing so many other women and manipulating them for fun (even staged it is not ethical), furthermore, literally staging all the young gen Z white women as being bullies and selfish assholes and all the old men as being the helpful ones.

The comments are even worse; they are so stupid and not realising that its fucking staged. Not to mention the badly monolithic takes.

This leads me to think that it is just another radicalising content creator.

How many more will I get? YouTube shorts recommends me this shit despite I never touched this genre, and Snapchat discovery, again discussing what what gen z tiktok white woman had done and making it seem like it is the general character, even though these types of people are not known by the public. Like this is not why I used snapchat. I only used it to retain contact with people I like, including ones from high school who I will never see again. And these types of genres not only bombard my feeds, but also give me social anxiety. Only if there is an option to disable discovery. On snapchat discovery I mainly look at crime, and text stories, not this brainrotting wasteland.

I hate hate hate the internet and how it has held me back in almost every aspect of my life. I want to be rid of it as much as possible, but sadly in the times we live in it's impossible or at least severely impractical to not have acess at all. I installed the Cold Turkey Blocker recently and that has really helped, especially since I can schedule time where all distracting websites are blocked, but I can give myself some time to browse in the day. The problem is even when I can't access social media or YouTube, I'll find some other way to mindlessly click around and scroll I've done it so much it feels weird not doing it. I want to read more and replace the majority of my screen time with reading or practicing piano or journaling or something productive. But even when I don't have access to the websites, I was addicted to I still find something else to scroll, even scrolling in the photo's app on my phone. How do I pull myself away?

This question have been hanging around in my mind, why is it so hard for me to have self control?

I am for sure addicted to the internet, especially short form content. It has become really bad, and a drain upon my life, and I've decided to take steps to improve. Today I went to an Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous meeting (ITAA) and I must say I enjoyed it. I've only been to one, so don't have a fully formed opinion, but it was definitely nice to listen to other people share some of their challenges, and to be able to talk about my own feelings. There were for sure some ideas that I wasn't particularly attracted to, but overall I think having a community of people with a similar goal as myself might be helpful. I would encourage anyone who has a serious problem with doomscrolling or brain rot to try it out. I was nervous at first, but everyone was welcoming and encouraging, and I appreciated it.

I just noticed that many people who are negative on social media including Reddit do not really go outside and see people.

They always whine about how every western gen zer are bad antisocials, erase family (as if all prefer their partner only) and provide poor service.

But as a person who does go out when I need, this matches barely. I was out with my dad for dinner in a mall, we went to a few shops and the staff were similar to my age, and they have manners; they followed the ethics and they were all local westerners (I live in the UK). I was also out more around the mall and there are many who were with their families and were nice; some with their friends and they were having usual face to face convo. There was one couple who did something wrong but again, every gen and society will have a bad youthful bunch, whether they are western, traditional, modern, honour-like, patriarchal bla bla bla.

So it leads me to believe that these people who are always pessimistic always just follow some tabloid site, these fake "motivational" life videos that are so anti-extrovert anti-ambivert that are just negatively monolithic on life.

Next year I may work part time at a retail within that mall, I will see plenty of Gen Z colleagues of my age and I doubt all will be inept lol.

If you want real life motivation and understand life, you need to take yourself actually outside.

Looking at the Digital Wellbeing screen makes me real anxious, sometimes. It's like it's saying I Have To meet this obligation. I've used Discord heavily and felt ashamed at Digital Wellbeing's nags and all, despite me using to to get immersed in niche fiction writing and role-playing communities.

A while back i fervently installed all the minimalist launchers I could find, argued with folks on smartphone addiction, and looked up recommendations on r/nosurf and r/dumbphones which made me more anxious due to thinking I should copy the folks on there and how they viewed excess Internet use as a curse. This went on for more a month as I flipped-flopped.

This afternoon resulted in culmination, as I stood in line at an electronics store and ordered a dumbphone, for $35 that now, I realize I may never use. It made me take a look at myself. Was I doing this for myself, or was I wasting time pleasing a bunch of people trying to conform to their ideals?

Upon my realization I stripped the digital detox measures away, choosing to be free of nagging, and decided to use my smartphone without guilt regardless of what I was doing.

After removing all the minimalist additions to my phone and effectively disabling Digital Wellbeing it was way easier to cope with whatever life threw at me. Sorta like this this op-ed from Wired. After reading it, I sincerely think that going back to a smartphone without restrictions would be better for myself overall, cos I kinda don't want another stressor or two in the form of a so-called wellbeing app breathing down my neck.

Frankly, what it boils down to is: If you truly cannot control yourself around your phone, it's fine. Social media is well known to be made to be addictive, and well, people who couldn't ever control themselves around their phones were never going to win. They shouldn't ever hate themselves or think that high screen time is a moral imperative or that it makes them a bad person- if surrendering to the smartphone is truly easier, then by all means do so.

ETA: My ordered dumbphone will arrive in a few days. Probably gonna see if they accept a change of mind refusal, though I may just take the device and suck it up - for $35 it doesn't seem too worth it to exchange it for anything else since I already have enough data cables, USB drives, earbuds, and assorted tech accessories matching its price range, which here translate to "cheap, medicore stuff in between off brand and name brand".

Not to mention, it's a whole cell phone - not a smartphone but still. Not a lot of deals like that here in New Zealand/Australia.

Hey I was wondering if anyone knows of any devices or small laptops which you can use for writing, that don’t connect to the internet and have a really simple/basic UI? I have thought about using a typewriter, but I’d like a device that can keep up with how fast my thoughts go and the keys on typewriters are too clunky for me to type too fast, and they’re too bulky to carry around with me. I discovered the device “Freewrite” last night, are there any other devices such as this out there? Or maybe an old small laptop? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

I thought I was bad, but I wasn't that bad right.

Watching the quiz and saw them struggling on some questions. They all had niches on their interests, but they didn't get everything right.

Its the smosh cast, how am I more chronically online then them? What a wakeup call.

Sonewhere at some point Mike Tyson said he doesn't own a phone anymore as the phone represents his lowest self

I feel like that.

I've got some bad habits which are made worse by my constant internet access. I wish I could ditch my phone but I've got long distance family members who only communicate via WhatsApp. I dunno if that's just an excuse I make though.

I am trying to install GrayScale chrome extensions for my Chromebook and nothing is working. They are enabled when I install them but they don't work. Any suggestions?

I’ve been off social media for a few months now (will only occasionally pop onto Reddit), and like many posts on here I echo the same sentiment about rediscovering how to navigate boredom, and reclaiming my life.

However, what I’m struggling with is how much I relied on social to influence my creative process. I love to create, wouldn’t say I’m a master at any craft more of an enjoyer of many things; writing, drawing, DIYing, trying something new. Social has in recent memory guided me creatively and since I’m no longer being constantly influenced by something I kind of find myself craving to be stimulated in that way again.

There would be days where I felt myself in a mental rut and in scrolling, something exciting would find me in my feed and draw me to act upon a creative impulse, changing the entire course of my day.

Anyone have any tips for rediscovering their creative side again? What are some ways you draw inspiration from other sources in your day to day?

Since last year, I was recommended on the internet, YouTube nothing but some absurd kind of content that distorted my view on life.

I get recommended life "motivation" videos, but turns out these are just anti-extrovert, even anti-ambivert incel stuff: saying how 99.999 (recurring) % of western young people are all insane, stupid, entitled, bullies who are antsocially behaving, not caring for their families, etc (especially them saying how every western woman modern are bad) and it did distort my view. This actually formed part of my social anxiety.

There obviously had been a bunch of bad youths for years and years in every region. But the way these videos are made looks as if 99% of White British students back at my school (which I left last year) would be all in isolation, detentions or even expelled, but in real life it was not the case.

As a result of that social anxiety I was incurred by, it makes me scared to go out. Tonight my parents are taking me out for dinner on boxing day and the restaurant will be a South Asian city of some sort, and these vids make me assume that if I go, I may get humiliated by all the young people for still caring for my family at the age of 17 (as if all of these people at my age are antisocially behaved, erasing their families just to be in their friend gangs or their partner). There are already studies in the UK that families (both White British and minorities) are socialising and loving each other even as teens being 18+ right up to even 27 (obviously, bad families, anti social rebellious individual will continue to be distant)

But I want to find a way to undo this. Prior to this rabbithole, I enjoyed being in social areas, whether there are bad or good teens at my age (though I am now an ambivert due to bff betrayals and friend losses; these motivational vids are forcing me to become an introvert).

If I could see my screen time for reddit in 2024, I'd most likely be disgusted. I've spent 2-5 hours a day on Reddit the whole year and neglected many other important projects just to scroll and I've got nothing to show for it.

I likely wasted 1000 hours on reddit.

How do I delete my account? I've got so many saves posts and I've had this account for a long time

I've been getting increasingly better at NoSurf when I'm not at work - I read (physical books), write (on physical paper), walk a lot, cook, clean, go for drives, go to the gym, talk w/ people on the phone, etc. My life has become much more peaceful and enjoyable with all these changes.

But my job has given me a challenge. Some days are so insanely busy that NoSurf just happens by default. But other days are so slow, as in 90% downtime, and on those days I would find myself doomscrolling reddit, youtube and different forums. All of my coworkers do the same shit - mainly YouTube and social media (I deleted social media a long time ago).

Anyways, this doomscrolling would then bleed over somewhat into my non-work hours.

I tried reading eBooks on my phone but I just could not immerse myself in a full length book while I was at work, knowing that my job could pop off at any time and steal me away from it.

Anyways, last week I got so sick of this conundrum. So I subscribed to Apple News. I figured: if I'm going to be looking at my phone, I might as well read some actual articles. Well they give you full access to a ton of newspapers and magazines.

This little change has been massively beneficial. I'm now reading a ton more, and feeling mentally nourished by it. And, because I'm not doomscrolling brain-rot content like a crack-fiend on a binge, when my job does inevitably pop off and requires my attention, it is much easier to pull away from my phone - and I can always go back to the articles.

Reading full actual articles that take 10, 15, even 30 minutes to read (like the longer magazine features), is also making me more lucid and fluent in conversations and its improving my attention span for reading actual books in my off hours.

I know this is different than some of the advice here which tells you to do the nuclear option and get rid of your smartphone (which might be a great option for some people of course), but sometimes even small adjustments like this can significantly improve the weaker links in the chain of your NoSurf journey.

I know this advice won't work for everyone. Some people need to stay the hell off their phones period - and I'm rooting for everyone here to make the changes they need to make.

Also - Merry Christmas everybody